Scientists shed light on how and why some people report ‘hearing the dead’

Spiritualistic mediums may be more prone to immersive mental activities and unusual auditory experiences at a young age, according to new research.

This could explain why some people and not others end up adopting spiritistic beliefs and engaging in the practice of “ hearing the dead, ” the study led by Durham University found.

Mediums who “hear” spirits would experience clairvoyant communication, rather than clairvoyant (“seeing”) or clairvoyant (“feeling” or “feeling”) communication.

The researchers conducted a survey of 65 clairvoyant spiritist mediums from the Spiritualists’ National Union and 143 members of the general population in the largest scientific study of the experiences of clairvoyant mediums.

They found that these spiritualists have a tendency to absorption – a quality related to immersion in mental or imaginative activities or the experience of altered states of consciousness.

Mediums are also more likely to report experiences with unusual auditory symptoms, such as hearing voices, which often occur early in life.

Many who experience absorption or hearing voices encounter spiritistic beliefs when looking for the meaning behind, or supernatural meaning of, their unusual experiences, the researchers said.

The findings are published in the journal Mental Health, Religion and Culture. The research is part of Hearing the Voice – an interdisciplinary study of voice hearing at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Spiritualism is a religious movement based on the idea that human souls persist after death and communicate with the living through a medium or psychic person.

Interest in spiritism is on the rise in Britain with various organizations supporting, training and offering the services of practicing mediums. One of the largest, the SNU, claims to serve at least 11,000 members through its training institute, churches and centers.

Through their study, the researchers collected detailed descriptions of how mediums experience spirit ‘voices’ and compared levels of absorption, hallucination tendency, aspects of identity, and belief in the paranormal.

They found that 44.6 percent of the spiritistic participants reported hearing the voices of the deceased on a daily basis, and 33.8 percent reported an experience of clairaudience in the past day.

A large majority (79 percent) said that experiences of auditory spiritual communication were part of their daily life, both when they were alone and when they were working as a medium or attending a spiritistic church.

Although ghosts were heard mainly in the head (65.1 percent), 31.7 percent of the spiritistic participants said they experienced spirit voices coming from both inside and outside the head.

When judged on a scale of absorption, as well as how strongly they believe in the paranormal, spiritualists score much higher than members of the general population.

Spiritists cared less about what others thought of them than people in general, and they also scored higher for susceptibility to unusual hallucination-like auditory experiences.

Both high levels of absorption and susceptibility to such auditory manifestations were linked to reports of more frequent clairaudient communication, according to the findings.

For the general population, absorption was associated with levels of belief in the paranormal, but there was no significant correlation between belief and hallucination sensitivity.

There was also no difference in levels of superstitious belief or susceptibility to visual hallucinations between spiritistic and non-spiritistic participants.

Spiritists reported experiencing clairaudience for the first time at an average age of 21.7 years. However, 18 percent of spiritualists reported having clairaudient experiences “as long as they could remember,” and 71 percent had not come into contact with spiritism as a religious movement before their initial experiences.

The researchers say their findings suggest that it does not give in to social pressure, learning to have specific expectations, or a level of belief in the paranormal that leads to experiences of spiritual communication.

Instead, it appears that some people have a unique predisposition to absorption and are more likely to report unusual auditory experiences that occur early in life. For many of these individuals, spiritualist beliefs are embraced because they connect meaningfully with those unique personal experiences.

Lead researcher Dr. Adam Powell, in the Hearing the Voice project at Durham University and the Department of Theology and Religion, said: “Our findings say a lot about ‘learning and desire.’ For our participants, the principles of spiritism seem to have meaning for both extraordinary childhood experiences and the frequent auditory phenomena they experience as exercise mediums.

“But all of those experiences may have resulted more from having certain tendencies or early abilities than from simply believing in the ability to contact the dead if one tries hard enough.”

Dr. Peter Moseley, co-author of the study at Northumbria University, noted, “Spiritualists generally report unusual auditory experiences that are positive, start early in life and then often control. Understanding how these develop is important. because it can help us understand more about troubling or unverifiable experiences of hearing voices “

Durham’s researchers are now engaged in further research on clairaudience and mediumship, working with practitioners to gain a more complete picture of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of such unusual and meaningful experiences.

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